The Deranged Left, Part CCLIXII

Over the last two days, there have been two jaw dropping examples of how truly deranged the left has become.

First, this piece appeared on the front page of Daily Kos. It is self-explanatory:

As U.S. casualties have continued to drop, many people on the anti-Bush side of the aisle have begun to quietly panic in recent days over this question: “Could George W. Bush and Frederick Kagan have possibly been right about the surge?”

The fact that Democrats and the left would "panic" over winning the war tells you all you need to know about the shockingly cockeyed priorities the left holds regarding America. They would rather see us lose in Iraq than shown to be wrong.

Not to be outdone, the original "moonbat" - George Monbiot - pens a piece for Alternet in which he dearly hopes that we go into a deep recession:

I recognise that recession causes hardship. Like everyone I am aware that it would cause some people to lose their jobs and homes. I do not dismiss these impacts or the harm they inflict, though I would argue that they are the avoidable results of an economy designed to maximise growth rather than welfare.

What I would like you to recognise is something much less discussed: that, beyond a certain point, hardship is also caused by economic growth.

On Sunday I visited the only UN biosphere reserve in Wales: the Dyfi estuary. As is usual at weekends, several hundred people had come to enjoy its beauty and tranquillity and, as is usual, two or three people on jet skis were spoiling it for everyone else.

Most economists will tell us that human welfare is best served by multiplying the number of jet skis. If there are two in the estuary today, there should be four there by this time next year and eight the year after. Because the estuary's beauty and tranquillity don't figure in the national accounts (no one pays to watch the sunset) and because the sale and use of jet skis does, this is deemed an improvement in human welfare.

Perhaps they could ban jet skis. So what's the solution?

The massive improvements in human welfare -- better housing, better nutrition, better sanitation and better medicine -- over the past 200 years are the result of economic growth and the learning, spending, innovation and political empowerment it has permitted. But at what point should it stop? In other words, at what point do governments decide that the marginal costs of further growth exceed the marginal benefits? Most of them have no answer to this question. Growth must continue, for good or ill. It seems to me that in the rich nations we have already reached the logical place to stop.

You read that last part correctly. Mr. Moonbat wants economic growth to "stop." Of course, the consequences would be predictable:

But because political discourse is controlled by people who put the accumulation of money above all other ends, this policy appears to be impossible. Unpleasant as it will be, it is hard to see what except an accidental recession could prevent economic growth from blowing us through Canaan and into the desert on the other side.

That's the ticket. Let's stop economic growth, dive into a ruinous depression, and have everyone live off the government dole as God intended.

It is impossible to make this kind of idiocy up. It just goes to show that just when you think they can't get any loonier, the left offers up a wealth of surprises.

Over the last two days, there have been two jaw dropping examples of how truly deranged the left has become.

First, this piece appeared on the front page of Daily Kos. It is self-explanatory:

As U.S. casualties have continued to drop, many people on the anti-Bush side of the aisle have begun to quietly panic in recent days over this question: “Could George W. Bush and Frederick Kagan have possibly been right about the surge?”

The fact that Democrats and the left would "panic" over winning the war tells you all you need to know about the shockingly cockeyed priorities the left holds regarding America. They would rather see us lose in Iraq than shown to be wrong.

Not to be outdone, the original "moonbat" - George Monbiot - pens a piece for Alternet in which he dearly hopes that we go into a deep recession:

I recognise that recession causes hardship. Like everyone I am aware that it would cause some people to lose their jobs and homes. I do not dismiss these impacts or the harm they inflict, though I would argue that they are the avoidable results of an economy designed to maximise growth rather than welfare.

What I would like you to recognise is something much less discussed: that, beyond a certain point, hardship is also caused by economic growth.

On Sunday I visited the only UN biosphere reserve in Wales: the Dyfi estuary. As is usual at weekends, several hundred people had come to enjoy its beauty and tranquillity and, as is usual, two or three people on jet skis were spoiling it for everyone else.

Most economists will tell us that human welfare is best served by multiplying the number of jet skis. If there are two in the estuary today, there should be four there by this time next year and eight the year after. Because the estuary's beauty and tranquillity don't figure in the national accounts (no one pays to watch the sunset) and because the sale and use of jet skis does, this is deemed an improvement in human welfare.

Perhaps they could ban jet skis. So what's the solution?

The massive improvements in human welfare -- better housing, better nutrition, better sanitation and better medicine -- over the past 200 years are the result of economic growth and the learning, spending, innovation and political empowerment it has permitted. But at what point should it stop? In other words, at what point do governments decide that the marginal costs of further growth exceed the marginal benefits? Most of them have no answer to this question. Growth must continue, for good or ill. It seems to me that in the rich nations we have already reached the logical place to stop.

You read that last part correctly. Mr. Moonbat wants economic growth to "stop." Of course, the consequences would be predictable:

But because political discourse is controlled by people who put the accumulation of money above all other ends, this policy appears to be impossible. Unpleasant as it will be, it is hard to see what except an accidental recession could prevent economic growth from blowing us through Canaan and into the desert on the other side.

That's the ticket. Let's stop economic growth, dive into a ruinous depression, and have everyone live off the government dole as God intended.

It is impossible to make this kind of idiocy up. It just goes to show that just when you think they can't get any loonier, the left offers up a wealth of surprises.